For Thanksgiving this year, we started a new tradition. . .

Pie contest!!

The contestants:

Bonnie and Aubs went all out. . . homemade crust, new pear pie recipe. . . the works

Shawna had it a little easier. One of my sweet students (ok- lets be honest- one of my sweet parents) gave me a pie in a box: Homemade apple pie filling, the crumb mixture for the top, and the caramel sauce to drizzle on top of that. All I had to do was provide the delicious nilla wafer crumb pie crust and pop the whole thing in the oven!

Last minute entry- Cayden. After a silly orange/honeycomb pie failure, we booked it to Vons to grab a premade oreo crumb crust, filled it with some kind of ice cream that was chilling in the freezer, and covered the whole thing in the instant freeze chocolate. A ten minute pie for sure.

And Mom. . . she went to Costco...

Cayden got all into it. Immediately after dinner he got to work making ballots and a ballot box. Though he did refuse to put mom on the ballot. Something about store bought pies not being allowed.

Then a couple hours (and quite some nagging from Cayden) later, our stomachs had finally settled just enough to dig in to our very own "sample" plates.

It was a tough decision...

They were all so good!

(no worries- mom still got a write-in vote)

And the winner was declared. . .

But what does it really matter WHO won? It was the fun of the contest right?

Though I must say, I almost wept when my pie was gone. It was meant to be the winner.

I forsee this tradition living on in the future Kelly Thanksgivings. . .